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MarketPulse

12:11PM

Germany's Merkel to visit Greece Tuesdayby William L. Watts

FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel will travel to Athens Tuesday to hold talks with Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Friday. "The message that Germany can take to Greece ... is that we want to help Greece stabilize itself within the euro zone," Seibert told reporters, according to Agence France-Presse. Germany has faced a backlash in Greece over its insistence on pressing ahead with tough austerity measures. The announcement of Merkel's trip comes as Greece attempts to finalize talks with its troika of international lenders in an effort to secure its next round of aid.

11:04AM

Canada stocks higher after jobs figures by Carla Mozee

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- Canadian stocks gained Friday, on track for a weekly rise, after a report showed the Canadian and U.S. economies each added more jobs last month than had been anticipated. The S&P/TSX Composite
(ca:gsptse)
picked up 0.2% to 12,473. Financial and industrial stocks were among advancers after Statistics Canada said employment increased by 52,000 jobs in September, mainly in full-time work. The unemployment rate rose to 7.4% from 7.3% in August as more people searched for jobs, said the government statistics agency. But a decline in energy stocks
(xx:tten)
as prices for oil and natural gas pulled back limited gains for the Canadian equity market.

FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) -- Spanish, Italian and Portuguese government bonds extended a rise Friday, while safe-haven German bunds lost ground, after a larger-than-expected fall in the U.S. unemployment rate to 7.8% in September fueled stronger risk appetite on both sides of the Atlantic. The yield on the 10-year Spanish government bond
(es:10yr_esp)
tumbled 0.23 percentage point to 5.66%, according to Tradeweb. Yields fall as bond prices rise. The yield on Portugal's 10-year bond tumbled 0.60 percentage point to 8.01%, while Italy's 10-year yield
(it:10yr_ita)
declined 0.10 percentage point to 5.02%. Moreover, the yield premium demanded to hold peripheral bonds over comparable German paper declined, with the yield on Germany's 10-year bund
(de:10yr_ger)
rising 0.07 percentage point to 1.52%.

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Avon Products Inc.
(avp)
shares rose 5.7% on Friday after the largest direct seller of beauty products said Andrea Jung is stepping down as chairman and board member. Gap Inc.
(gps)
shares rose 1% after Caris & Co. raised the stock rating to buy from above average. Dollar Tree Inc.
(dltr)
and Family Dollar Stores Inc.
(fdo)
were up 2% and 1.2% each after Credit Suisse assumed coverage of the discounters with an outperform rating. Their larger rival Dollar General Corp.
(dg)
dipped 0.5%. Credit Suisse started its coverage of the stock with a neutral rating.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Shares of Zynga Inc.
(znga)
and Facebook Inc.
(fb)
fell early Friday in reaction to Zynga's sharply-lowered forecast from Thursday afternoon. Zynga plunged more than 20%, tripping the Nasdaq's circuit breaker meant to shield stocks from manipulation by short-sellers. The stock was downgraded to neutral by Baird citing concerns over the "magnitude" of the forecast cut. Facebook, where most of Zynga's games are played, saw its shares sink 3% after J.P. Morgan cut its revenue target for Facebook's Payments unit based on the social gaming firm's outlook change. Also in the red were shares of Hewlett-Packard
(hpq)
which were down nearly 2% after Sterne Agee cut its rating to neutral citing the uncertainty at the tech giant. The Nasdaq Composite Index
(comp)
still managed to stay in the green, gaining 10 points to stand at 3,159, as an upbeat jobs report lifted the broader market.

NEW YORK - MarketWatch) - U.S. financial stocks, led by Bank of America Corp.
(bac)
, rose on a tailwind from the broader market on Friday after a better-than-expected jobs report and a surprise decline in the unemployment rate. Bank of America, the second-best performer in Dow Jones Industrial Average
(djia)
on Friday, gained 2.3%. The three other Dow financials, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
(jpm)
, American Express Co.
(axp)
and Travelers Cos.
(trv)
, all rose too. The Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF
(xlf)
, which tracks the financial stocks in the S&P 500
(spx)
, rose 0.8%.

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Peabody Energy Corp.
(btu)
moved up by 2.4% and Valero Energy Corp.
(vlo)
rose 1.9% as energy stocks advanced with the broad equities market on Friday. Exxon Mobil Corp.
(xom)
rose 0.5% and Chevron Corp.
(cvx)
moved up by 0.4%. The two oil majors are components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average
($dj)
, which rose 74 points. Also moving up, Murphy Oil
(mur)
added 1.1%. On the down side, First Solar Inc.
(fslr)
fell 4.3%.

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- U.S. stocks began higher Friday after the Labor Department reported the addition of 114,000 jobs in September and an unemployment rate of 7.8%, data that could reinforce Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's current monetary policy. "This keeps the Fed's bias towards easing in place, because the Fed has emphasized full employment as a primary goal of its policies, so it reinforces Bernanke's perspective that he needs to keep rates at low levels until employment moves down more meaningfully," said Matthew Kaufler, portfolio manager at Federated Investors. The Dow Jones Industrial Average
(djia)
rose 64.6 points to 13,639.9. The S&P 500 index
(spx)
climbed 7.43 points to 1,468.83. The Nasdaq Composite
(comp)
gained 15.26 points to 3,164.72.

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